Soccer sets prisoner free in Chile

AP, QUILICURA, Chile

Fog blankets the grassy soccer field surrounded by chickens and grazing cows as the players of Santiago Morning sprint through a practice game. It is just another training session in Chile’s second-tier soccer league, but at least one man plays like a child running free in a pasture.

For Maxim Molokoedov, it is a taste of temporary freedom after almost three years in prison — and a renewed shot at a professional soccer career that seemed to have been cut short.

Every evening, the Russian footballer sleeps behind bars. However, every morning, Molokoedov walks out of his prison cell, ready to hit the field wearing the jersey of his professional soccer team.

The newest star of Santiago Morning is getting a second shot at life through soccer after he was arrested carrying 6kg of cocaine that he planned to smuggle to Europe inside children’s books.

“I’m so happy, but I know I need to work hard. It’s been three years since I played at this level,” Molokoedov, 24, said in a thick accent, sometimes dropping in Spanish slang that he learned from other inmates. “I have a six-month contract. I’m looking forward, but I’m living a day at a time.”

Back home in Russia, Molokoedov had dropped out of school in his native St Petersburg, but was recruited by second-division soccer team FK Pskov 747 because of his power and agility with a ball.

Traveling from Ecuador in 2010 on his way to Madrid and then Moscow, he was arrested during a stop at the airport in the Chilean capital of Santiago. He was sentenced to three years and one day.

Molokoedov said he was stupid, regrets it and prefers not to talk about it, calling the experience “a bad memory.”

The first days at Santiago’s penitentiary were rough. Molokoedov slept in a crammed cell with four other prisoners, did not speak a word of Spanish and missed his family. He put his faith in a wooden rendering of St Nicholas, known as the “Wonderworker” in the Russian Orthodox church.

The miracle came at the rocky prison yard’s pickup games. Inmates began offering him deodorant and a bar of soap to be treated to a few minutes of his dribbling skills and brutal right-footed shot.

Word got around about “El Ruso.” It reached Chilean national coach Claudio Borghi, who said Molokoedov was good enough to go pro. It also reached Franklin Lobos, a former Chilean professional player who volunteers at prisons and who vouched for the Russian.

With almost a year still to go on his sentence, Molokoedov does not yet qualify for Sunday passes or the daily passes many inmates get after they complete most of their term. However, starting late last month, the warden began letting him leave the prison grounds to play soccer as long he was accompanied by a guard. “It’s an exceptional situation that has to do with Maxim’s sporting abilities,” said Max Laulie, a spokesman for Chile’s prison police.

Such an arrangement would be difficult to imagine in countries with zero tolerance for drugs such as Singapore, Malaysia or Iran, where traffickers often get the death penalty or at least a lengthy prison term.

“We’re not trying to defend this practice, but the objective behind it, which is rehabilitating people, in this case someone who has a shot at becoming a professional soccer player,” Laulie said. “The prison’s system defends this opportunity to reintegrate him into society. We just hope he does well.”